Thank you for the question. The feeling amongst our members is that the lack of confidence is based on all of those issues that you've cited, such as regulation—federal regulations. Currently, as you know, I'm sure, the Government of Alberta is looking at a red tape reduction strategy. They're making great strides towards that. That's helping with the level of confidence or lack of confidence.
Certainly, when you take a look at regulation, access to capital, taxation and regulations for the Income Tax Act, say, it's not just one of those items that is affecting the confidence level of Alberta businesses. You have to top onto that the uncertainty and the long and protracted period that we've had in trying to get approvals on pipelines to stick. We're waiting now for approval of the Teck Frontier mine, which I think is going to be a real test for the Government of Canada as to whether they approve it or not.
My point is that those individual one-offs on their own do affect confidence, but when you get a layering of those issues, one on top of the other, and when you get basically an overall negative outlook on the economy, certainly what it does, particularly for small businesses, is it sends businesses into a spiral of negativity, and that builds on itself.
You also can add to that the whole issue of Albertans and Alberta businesses feeling that over the last five to six years since we've started this most recent downturn, Alberta has been left to its own devices to try to climb out of it. It certainly creates an issue. Alberta and its residents—by default—are feeling that perhaps the Government of Canada and the rest of Canada don't really care about the reality of what's going on in our province.